Connecticut Enhances Protections for Pregnant Women in the Workplace

On July 6, 2017, Connecticut signed into law, “An Act Concerning Pregnant Women in the Workplace.” This is an act which amends the Connecticut Fair Employment Practices Act and adds and modifies the protections for pregnant women.

The new act makes it illegal for employers to:

limit, segregate or classify the employee in a way that would deprive her of employment opportunities due to her pregnancy;

discriminate against an employee or person seeking employment on the basis of her pregnancy in the terms or conditions of her employment;

make a reasonable accommodation for an employee or person seeking employment due to her pregnancy, unless the employer can demonstrate that such accommodation would impose an undue hardship on such employer;

deny employment opportunities to an employee or person seeking employment if such denial is due to the employee’s request for a reasonable accommodation due to her pregnancy;

force an employee or person seeking employment affected by pregnancy to accept a reasonable accommodation if such employee or person seeking employment (i) does not have a known limitation related to her pregnancy, or (ii) does not require a reasonable accommodation to perform the essential duties related to her employment;

require an employee to take a leave of absence if a reasonable accommodation can be provided in lieu of such leave;

retaliate against an employee in the terms, conditions or privileges of her employment based upon such employee’s request for a reasonable accommodation.

In addition, an employer must provide employees with written notice of the right to be free from discrimination in relation to pregnancy, childbirth and related conditions, including the right to a reasonable accommodation to the known limitations related to pregnancy. Toward this end, there is a mandatory posting requirement for all employers. These new changes become effective October 1, 2017 and posters must be in place by no later than January 28, 2018.

The Labor Law Center also offers a worry-free service to our customers through our Poster Service Plan with automatic replacements. What this means is that we monitor the state and federal postings and automatically send you updates when they are released. It is that simple!

We also offer our clients our newly updated Education Center. If you are new to labor law compliance or just wanting to keep up with the latest news and changes as they come out, this is the place to bookmark and visit regularly.

Related Posts

After significant discussion within the state, Maryland has moved forward with the 2018 Healthy Working Families Act. The act went into effect on February 11, 2018. Employers with 15 or more employees who do not offer at least one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours...

Hawaii, along with many other states, have taken this opportunity to update their labor law compliance notices. While the most notable change reflects Hawaii's increased minimum wage in 2018 from $9.25 to $10.10, numerous other changes are reflected to update the posters, primarily around administrative aspects that includes contact names...

Wyoming has recently updated several of their 2018 labor compliance postings. Most notable is the update to the penalties associated with complaints issued against workplace health and safety. Updates to the health and safety penalties are now $12,675 for each serious violation with optional penalties of up to...